BEER STYLES
a Lifford producing a 5% ABV beer amongst its other gruity offerings encompassing yerba mate (a South American green tea with as many sup- posed clinical attributes as kombucha), rose petals and seaweed. The Deutsche Institut für Grutkultur (grutkultur.de) was founding in the old gruit city of Munster in 2017 and aims to research the old style and brew them at the local Gruthaus-Brauerei. There is much enthusiasm with Brett and LB readily available, many will have wooden casks tucked away quietly composting. Let’s hope the market is ready for some complex and intriguing avours as they have been for centuries in northern Germany where there is a sour beer practice which is currently experiencing something of a revival. Over to Germany Berlinerweisse is less than 3% ABV, often very pale and cloudy but intensely dry and rather acid from a grist of up to 30% unmalted wheat. Beer pH can be 3.0 to 3.3 which is rather mouth puckering with up to 0.8% lactic acid in the glass. Pundits are at a loss to explain how the style developed with the wheat beer tradition starting much further south. I like to think it sprung up spontaneously (ha ha) helped along by the Baltic and North Sea trading routes developed
where supply was often controlled by the church. The main additions with varying degrees of narcotic as well as avouring and preservative properties were sweet gale (bog myrtle), rosemary, wormwood, yarrow, juniper, caraway or heather. Those with seafaring connections could use gin- ger or cinnamon if they were rich enough. There was an early distinction in the UK with gruit products being called ‘ale’ and those using hops were classed as a ‘beer’. Some writers have surmised that the hop only became widely used as secular bodies wanted to assert their independence as the Reformation progressed. Today the Gruut City Brewery at Ghent in Belgium has a ve-strong port- folio replacing hops with bitter herbs but does not say which ones are used only calling them Ghent Gruut Wit, Blonde, Amber, Bruin and Inferno. Williams Bros. at Alloa in Scotland has a well established heather brew called Fraoch as well as beers incor- porating Scots pine, gooseberries, elderberries and seaweed. This latter addition to the mash tun immediately turns the goods black with an instant iodine reaction. Its Christmas brew called Nollaig has spruce tips. An up and coming avour seems to be rosemary – with Wales’ Tomas
had ever learned about keeping wild yeast and bacteria out of his processes! Many other UK micros are exper- imenting. Harbour in Cornwall has its Hinterland project now complete with a coolship and Wild Beer in Somerset is equally creative in sourcing yeasts from apple orchards and foraging for local botanicals. It is about to bring a young version of its coolship brew to market. Gyle 59 hunts in Dorset hedgerows. Stone Angel has a 5.2% Medieval Ale with 20 different avouring ingredients to remind us of what our ancestors might have sampled. Siren in Surrey is famous for its Yu Lu tea infused beer (Earl Grey and lemon zest) and is bringing over 100 beers to market in 2019; its Maiden and Odyssey ranges display excellent beers which have seen the inside of a wooden cask. Burning Sky was the rst craft brew- ery in the UK to install oak foudres for ageing beers; it has its own coolship and has layered staves from wine barrels in the rafters above so that steam from the hot wort condenses and drips back into the wort carrying microbes with it. These local herbs hark back to the days before the hop became the universal bittering and preserving agent added to wort. The mixture of bittering herbs was called gruit and it was big business in medieval times in Europe
The OverWorks building contains 1200 x 225L casks mainly of French and Hungarian oak which have already been home to red wine – which tends to strip unwanted tannin avours. There are eight 100hL wooden foeders and another ten at 50hL. (Photo: Brewdog).
30 ● BREWER AND DISTILLER INTERNATIONAL I october 2019
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